GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Upset by long lines at some inner-city polling places in his district, state Rep. Brandon Dillon, D-Grand Rapids, plans to introduce legislation for early voting that’s used elsewhere in the country.

Dillon was peeved by lengthy waits - 3 hours and more at one southeast Grand Rapids precinct - and even more disturbed by the suggestion that voters were to blame for the delays by taking too long to complete a ballot with six statewide and two local proposals.

“That was the most disheartening thing I heard (on Election Day), that somehow the voters weren’t educated enough,” Dillon said. “There’s a word that starts with a ‘b’ and ends with a ‘t’ that I would use to describe that excuse.

“I really think it’s an insult to try to blame the people who are voting. The ballot was longer. It was a little more confusing. But that is not the reason we had a bottleneck (at polling places). This idea of blaming people for taking too long to vote is ridiculous on its face. This is like refusing to take responsibility for poor planning.”

Dillon showed up at Community Revival Center, where some prospective voters left rather than wait in line to cast a ballot. He said it was taking too long to get voters checked in because the church building doesn’t have enough capacity to handle turnout for a presidential election, and because there were not enough poll workers to get voters through the process efficiently.

“It’s very difficult to identify exactly what the problem is, but it seems to be something that continues in parts of Grand Rapids every presidential election,” Dillon said. “The bottom line is it’s unacceptable. I saw people leaving because they had to get to work or they just couldn’t stay with their kids for four hours.

“When you have the most sophisticated democracy in the world and can’t figure out a way to let people vote without making it a hardship, it has to be addressed. I’m going to talk to some people in Lansing: I do think early voting has been a success in the states where it’s at. I’m going to make this a priority.”

When MLive visited the Community Revival Center on Election Day, shortly before the polling place’s 8 p.m. closing time, voters filled the church building’s pews. Election workers passed out sample ballots for voters to review before getting into the booth.

City officials said election workers and voting booths were added to the polling place during the day, but MLive observed several of those booths unoccupied.

“If you see empty stations, it’s because you’re not being able to check people in efficiently,” said Jim Bruinsma, a Grand Rapids attorney working with the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights on election issues. “It’s because they’re not processing the applications quickly enough and getting people their ballots.”

Bruinsma said his organization dispatched lawyers to several Grand Rapids polling places, and Community Revival Center was “the low point in terms of the experience for the voters.” The facility is ill-suited to host voters for a national election because of limited parking and interior space, he said.

“Much of the city ran very smoothly, but there were particular trouble spots in the heavily minority areas,” Bruinsma said. “The easiest solution to this, which is not a city solution, would be to have early voting.

“It’s almost asking too much of the typical voter to try and (review eight ballot proposals) very efficiently and, frankly, the language is confusing to a lot of people. Early voting would eliminate that because people could spend as much time at home as they want.”

James B. White, a commissioner in the city’s Third Ward, said he hasn’t gotten “any real significant complaints” about long voting lines. He chalked up delays to a “tremendous” turnout and a “complicated” ballot.

Still, he said Grand Rapids officials will have to re-evaluate the voting process. The city, effective for the August primary election, reduced the number of voting precincts to 77, down from 100 when President Obama first won the White House in 2008.

“We have to assess the whole thing,” White said. “We’ll sit down and raise all those questions: Do we need more precincts? More polling places. Do we need more booths? We may have to hire more people to work the polls.

“We just need to do an assessment of the whole thing and look at it piece by piece and see how we can improve things. My strategy will be to encourage more people, the older people, to vot absentee. I voted absentee and I’m telling others to do the same.”